Saturday: Bikes and Eberron
Mar. 1st, 2009 12:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aOur Saturday gaming got off to a very late start yesterday. Fortunately, Donald called me around 12.15 to let me know that he and Mary were running 30-60 minutes behind, so I could make plans before I left the house.
However, I was already pretty much ready to leave at that point, so I just decided to go on a bike ride before arriving at Donald's.
I headed northwest through Berkeley, over the Pedestrian Bridge, turned south at the Berkeley Marina, and took the Bay Trail to Emeryville Marina. This is the best close area of the Bay Trail, and I enjoyed the bay views, even everything was quite gray.
(One of the reasons to do the bike ride was because we've been regularly having rain every Sunday since the 7th, whereas yesterday was cloudy but dry.)
When I was riding down to the Bay Trail I encountered an asshat who kept blowing through stop lights. I've seen a lot of them lately in my riding, and it just drives me crazy, as what they're doing is dangerous and gives bicyclists a bad name. At one point I came to a stop as a woman was walking out into the street; Mr. Asshat had just swerved quickly around her. She said to me, "You stopped!" surprise evident. I just said, "Yeah." Later I thought I should have said, "Not all bike riders are assholes," but the fact is that most in the Bay Area are.
In any case, Mr. Asshat eventually started gaining ground on me, as he blew through some lights that I ended up stuck behind for a while, and I lost track of him when he took the Pedestrian Bridge. I later ran into him along the Bay Trail, where I caught up, whizzed by, and then watched him rapidly disappearing in my rear view mirror as he wheezed along, trying to keep going. (He was actually idling along at 13 or 14 mph, but I was doing 15 mph on that straightaway.) I thought, "Not only are you a dumbass riding on the city streets, but it still doesn't get you ahead." Yep, that's me, Mr. Not Spiteful At All.
Arriving at the head of the Emeryville Marina I saw that I still had plenty of time, so I rode all the way out to the end of the Marina, reminding myself that the views going out into the marina are at least as good as the ones along that strip of trail. I particularly love getting out to the end of the Emeryville Marina and looking back at Oakland and Berkeley. Seeing the big landmarks like the Capanille and the Claremont Hotel from afar puts everything in perspective. I stood out there for a few minutes while a group of 10-year old kids bounced back and forth amidst sniper nests reporting oncoming intruders. By then it seemed like time to head back toward Oakland and Berkeley.
Heading into Emeryville, it looked like an economic apocalypse, as all the signboard wearers were out advertising going-out-of-business sales. Kevin later pointing out to me that the Circuit City ("all fixtures must go!") sale was a nationwide thing.
Afterward, I got to explore a bit by taking a left on Shellmound Ave. where I usually take a right when coming off Marina. It's another bike route. It goes right by the Emeryville Pedestrian Bridge (which, compared to Berkeley's, sucks because there's about four or five flights of stairs going up it, as opposed to a nice ramp--though it's less necessary than Berkeley's, because it bridges the railroad tracks rather than the highway) and the Border's (which I was tempted to stop at). And then I was surprised to realize that a right-hand turn took me right by Skotos' co-lo facility. I got to connect up a few more of the puzzle pieces of the local places I know; I'd never realized that the co-lo and the Border's were quite that close! Even better, the stop light up the street from our co-lo is now (finally) in, which means it's actually easy to get into the neighborhood, whereas before I had to ride some very busy and/or industrial streets to get there.
From there, the trip back up to Donald's was a hop, a skip, and a jump.
I got to Donald's at about 1.45. Donald didn't show up for another 15 minutes, and due to some hijinks with missing keys, it was another 30 minutes before we got in. Kind of annoying, but I try to not let that sort of thing get to me. There's little purpose and it can just spoil your fun.
My patience was really tested, however, when I discovered the reason for the lateness: a quest on an online game that they'd been doing that morning. Yep, people standing around outside, waiting, because of online gaming.
I just let it go by.
Our alternate-week game has been Donald running Eyes of the Lich Queen (for D&D3.5). Thus far, I like it better than the three adventure series that Donald had run previously.
That one was full of railroading and sorta so-so design.
This one has a lot of the same elements, including piles of dungeon crawls and recurring villains, but somehow is put together better. I think the main element is more interesting attention to encounter design. We're now about three weeks into the adventure and have explored a temple and returned to the town beyond it.
The first major encounter was a set of lizardfolk and dragons guarding the temple, and the encounters to assault the temple were interesting, as were the defenders' fallback positions. (After that the temple had some rooms full of potential death traps that I found a little less endearing, and reminded me of the earlier designs.)
The second major encounter (which we ran yesterday) took us beyond the temple, looking for a book that would give a clue to the location of another artifact. We found a burning building, a number of quickly sequential encounters within that building, and eventually fire and smoke began to set in. I thought it made good use of the D&D EL system, since the encounters really kept you running and wore you down in just the way the designers intended, and at the same time there were real opportunities for choice on how you dealt with the sequential encounters (and the smoke for that matter); even if the long-term plot of the adventure is railroaded, there were tactical opportunities.
I felt like we took good use of it. When the fire set in, we sent one of our PCs running out, then the other three of us took down the lead NPC, grabbed the book that she was carrying, and dimension-doored out, leaving remaining opponents to face the flames on their own.
We'll see how the rest of the module goes; it could be that it descends right into the problems of the other Eberron adventures, and that it just seemed better to me these last couple of weeks because we were thinking on our toes more.
Some interesting conversations between Kevin & Mary yesterday about D&D 3.5 v. 4. Kevin says he likes 4 better because it's simpler, while Mary says she likes 3.5 better because 4 is too simple.
After some discussion, it turned out that one of Kevin's main points of complaint is the huge number of books released for 3.5, and how they complicate the game. He agreed that 4 would be in much the same position in a few more years.
However, I was already pretty much ready to leave at that point, so I just decided to go on a bike ride before arriving at Donald's.
I headed northwest through Berkeley, over the Pedestrian Bridge, turned south at the Berkeley Marina, and took the Bay Trail to Emeryville Marina. This is the best close area of the Bay Trail, and I enjoyed the bay views, even everything was quite gray.
(One of the reasons to do the bike ride was because we've been regularly having rain every Sunday since the 7th, whereas yesterday was cloudy but dry.)
When I was riding down to the Bay Trail I encountered an asshat who kept blowing through stop lights. I've seen a lot of them lately in my riding, and it just drives me crazy, as what they're doing is dangerous and gives bicyclists a bad name. At one point I came to a stop as a woman was walking out into the street; Mr. Asshat had just swerved quickly around her. She said to me, "You stopped!" surprise evident. I just said, "Yeah." Later I thought I should have said, "Not all bike riders are assholes," but the fact is that most in the Bay Area are.
In any case, Mr. Asshat eventually started gaining ground on me, as he blew through some lights that I ended up stuck behind for a while, and I lost track of him when he took the Pedestrian Bridge. I later ran into him along the Bay Trail, where I caught up, whizzed by, and then watched him rapidly disappearing in my rear view mirror as he wheezed along, trying to keep going. (He was actually idling along at 13 or 14 mph, but I was doing 15 mph on that straightaway.) I thought, "Not only are you a dumbass riding on the city streets, but it still doesn't get you ahead." Yep, that's me, Mr. Not Spiteful At All.
Arriving at the head of the Emeryville Marina I saw that I still had plenty of time, so I rode all the way out to the end of the Marina, reminding myself that the views going out into the marina are at least as good as the ones along that strip of trail. I particularly love getting out to the end of the Emeryville Marina and looking back at Oakland and Berkeley. Seeing the big landmarks like the Capanille and the Claremont Hotel from afar puts everything in perspective. I stood out there for a few minutes while a group of 10-year old kids bounced back and forth amidst sniper nests reporting oncoming intruders. By then it seemed like time to head back toward Oakland and Berkeley.
Heading into Emeryville, it looked like an economic apocalypse, as all the signboard wearers were out advertising going-out-of-business sales. Kevin later pointing out to me that the Circuit City ("all fixtures must go!") sale was a nationwide thing.
Afterward, I got to explore a bit by taking a left on Shellmound Ave. where I usually take a right when coming off Marina. It's another bike route. It goes right by the Emeryville Pedestrian Bridge (which, compared to Berkeley's, sucks because there's about four or five flights of stairs going up it, as opposed to a nice ramp--though it's less necessary than Berkeley's, because it bridges the railroad tracks rather than the highway) and the Border's (which I was tempted to stop at). And then I was surprised to realize that a right-hand turn took me right by Skotos' co-lo facility. I got to connect up a few more of the puzzle pieces of the local places I know; I'd never realized that the co-lo and the Border's were quite that close! Even better, the stop light up the street from our co-lo is now (finally) in, which means it's actually easy to get into the neighborhood, whereas before I had to ride some very busy and/or industrial streets to get there.
From there, the trip back up to Donald's was a hop, a skip, and a jump.
I got to Donald's at about 1.45. Donald didn't show up for another 15 minutes, and due to some hijinks with missing keys, it was another 30 minutes before we got in. Kind of annoying, but I try to not let that sort of thing get to me. There's little purpose and it can just spoil your fun.
My patience was really tested, however, when I discovered the reason for the lateness: a quest on an online game that they'd been doing that morning. Yep, people standing around outside, waiting, because of online gaming.
I just let it go by.
Our alternate-week game has been Donald running Eyes of the Lich Queen (for D&D3.5). Thus far, I like it better than the three adventure series that Donald had run previously.
That one was full of railroading and sorta so-so design.
This one has a lot of the same elements, including piles of dungeon crawls and recurring villains, but somehow is put together better. I think the main element is more interesting attention to encounter design. We're now about three weeks into the adventure and have explored a temple and returned to the town beyond it.
The first major encounter was a set of lizardfolk and dragons guarding the temple, and the encounters to assault the temple were interesting, as were the defenders' fallback positions. (After that the temple had some rooms full of potential death traps that I found a little less endearing, and reminded me of the earlier designs.)
The second major encounter (which we ran yesterday) took us beyond the temple, looking for a book that would give a clue to the location of another artifact. We found a burning building, a number of quickly sequential encounters within that building, and eventually fire and smoke began to set in. I thought it made good use of the D&D EL system, since the encounters really kept you running and wore you down in just the way the designers intended, and at the same time there were real opportunities for choice on how you dealt with the sequential encounters (and the smoke for that matter); even if the long-term plot of the adventure is railroaded, there were tactical opportunities.
I felt like we took good use of it. When the fire set in, we sent one of our PCs running out, then the other three of us took down the lead NPC, grabbed the book that she was carrying, and dimension-doored out, leaving remaining opponents to face the flames on their own.
We'll see how the rest of the module goes; it could be that it descends right into the problems of the other Eberron adventures, and that it just seemed better to me these last couple of weeks because we were thinking on our toes more.
Some interesting conversations between Kevin & Mary yesterday about D&D 3.5 v. 4. Kevin says he likes 4 better because it's simpler, while Mary says she likes 3.5 better because 4 is too simple.
After some discussion, it turned out that one of Kevin's main points of complaint is the huge number of books released for 3.5, and how they complicate the game. He agreed that 4 would be in much the same position in a few more years.